Why the GMC was right to strike off Dr Andrew Wakefield

In 2006, a boy of 13 became the first person to die in this country from measles for 14 years. Three further deaths have been reported since then. In 2008, there were almost 1,400 cases.

Andrew Wakefield, who was struck off the medical register by the GMC today, must bear some responsibility for the resurgence of measles. It was his dodgy research which did so much to persuade parents and, it must be said, plenty of journalists, that there was something fishy about the MMR vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of parents refused to get the jab for their children. Even the Blairs would not say whether their son Leo had received the vaccination.

It seems to me completely reasonable that Wakefield was struck off, since his research was so grotesquely unethical. Patients require their doctors to be scrupulous, honest and ethical. They can make mistakes, as long they have the best interests of their patients at heart. But they cannot be unethical.

Don't forget, Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son's birthday party, which in itself shows "callous disregard for the distress and pain" of the children, as the GMC observed in January. And he neglected to mention when writing up his research that he'd been paid £55,000 by the Legal Aid Board to undertake the work on behalf of parents who thought the MMR had harmed their children. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says Wakefield's false claim – that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism – caused "untold damage to the UK vaccination programme".

He was and, it appears, still is, arrogant, foolish and self-justifying. He got carried away. He should have behaved with more humility and taken more notice of the mounting evidence from all over the world that failed to match his findings, and that indicated no link between MMR and autism. He was less than transparent. He caused enormous worry to vulnerable parents, and took advantage of people's anxieties about their children. In the end the MMR debacle harmed children above all.

But Wakefield could not have caused the huge scare single-handed. He needed the help of compliant sections of the media which like to alarm their readers. And I think that those journalists who did so much to spread the scare should ask themselves serious questions about the extent to which they properly examined the facts or were simply swept along by the general hysteria and by their desire to relate a sensational story. The message now is that, as Professor Terence Stephenson of the RCPCH says, "all children and young people should have the MMR vaccine. Overwhelming scientific evidence shows it is safe."